The Irish Times has published its obituary for Frank McDonald, whose ‘reporting was relentless’ and led to his ground-breaking book ‘The Destruction of Dublin’.
The Irish Times writes:
…Few journalists have the sort of impact he had…
Over a reporting career lasting some 50 years, he campaigned for better urban planning and design, and against the sort of corruption that can attend the nexus where swashbuckling construction comes into contact with politics and public administration. He… abhorred how central Dublin, in the 1960s and 1970s in particular, was… to descend into dereliction and squalor… Among McDonald’s other fans was one Bob Geldof. The singer described him, admiringly, as ‘a permanent thorn in the fat arse of municipal pretension’ – a description of which the journalist approved.
Thomas Francis (Frank) McDonald, who has died aged 76, was born in Dublin in 1950 and grew up in Cabra. …
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… At the end of ‘Truly Frank’ and ruminating on ageing and on death, McDonald quoted approvingly from the inscription on the tomb of the poet Philip Larkin. ‘What will survive of us is love,’ it reads. ‘I like to think that’s true,’ McDonald wrote…
